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Once again, and most unexpectedly (or not?), I tripped over two lusciously depicted nudes in a recent New York Times advertisement for a new exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in New York: Nude From Modigliani to Currin. Strangely, the pensive face of Amadeo Modigliani’s Venus, painted but three short years before his premature death at 35, makes me think of Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, always seeing a shadow of the suffering mother in Her beautiful face. Both Modigliani and Raphael, born centuries apart, died young after enjoying life to its fullest.

PORN FIT FOR SPANISH KINGS. A succinct caption for a review of yet another fabulous exhibition, this time in Williamstown, Mass., of erotic paintings from a period when a commoner would have been burned for far less than owning an out-rightly lewd painting. Jason Farago‘s New York Times article captures vividly the spirit of the show as well as an era when royals such as Rudolf II Habsburg or a papal grandson and contender, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, could and would have enjoyed such images in their private quarters. With bags of gold to fund offertory masses in perpetuity, the sinners’ souls would rise pure toward heaven, far from the darkest circles of Dante’s Hell and Purgatory, and certainly from the long fingers of the Inquisition.

In fiction, weaving PAST and PRESENT has now been fashionable for decades. More than ever before, mysterious links emerge, drawing readers to characters across centuries. I just bought Dominic Smith’s new novel, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, ready to enjoy its plot. Soon, it’ll join my numerous art-history-based novels, Tracy Chevalier’sGirl with a Pear Earring, Donna Tartt’sThe Goldfinch, as well as many other reaching back to when, years back, I first read Irving Stone’sThe Agony and the Ecstasy as well as “met” Vincent Van Gogh in Stone’s Lust for Life.

In the electronic age, when we can’t sneeze without using an ap, I was gratified to click on the link of a brief column in the Sunday’s New York Times, where only one of Paulette Tavormina’s stunning still-life photos has been published. Their crystalline beauty, vivid colors contrasting against the dark background are sheer music to my mind and my art. As far as I can remember, I’ve been in love with the paintings of the Dutch Golden Age, striving to paint in the manner of great Dutch masters like Jan Davidsz. de Heem and Rachel Ruysch.

The well-known art patron of Berti Spranger, Rudolf II Habsburg, had a collecting mania. Beautiful things, erotic things, and bizarre things. St. Michael appears in countless art works, but the one acquired by the Boston Museum of Art is certainly unusual!

Recently, when enjoying my tea and Black Forest cake in Cafe Vienna in Princeton, I picked up a copy of German Life Magazine. Before long, my mind was traveling over the Alps, and lo an behold, I quickly booked a visit to Ascona. Oh, and then there is Vienna, and Munich, and Prague… and many other places which you would enjoy learning about when your read my book My Life with Berti Spranger! The original inspiration for the book came also at Cafe Vienna, after Spranger’s amazing art work was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York last year.

My new book My Life with Berti Spranger seems to fit a new direction on the art and literati scene. A recent article in the New York Times focuses on the trend to liberate a large number of naughty masterpieces from their stigma and present them in an impressive exhibition at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass. Painted for and collected by the wealthiest and most powerful patrons, such as Rudof II Habsburg, the master of Bartholomaus Spranger, these works bear the names of Titian, Rubens, Tintoretto, Velázquez, and other grand masters. For centuries, tales of nude gods and goddesses pleased their collectors long before Playboy Magazine and other venues began to cater to more modern sets of eyes and mindsets.

When I was little, we children didn’t have to wait for Christmas. In early December, St. Nicholaus brought us goodies… umm… that is if we were “good” children.

HERE IS KARO’S EMAIL TO PIETER:

Hi Piet, or should I call you Zwarte Piet? We celebrate St. Nicholaus’ Day tomorrow night, but my newspaper reported that in Holland people think you should change the tradition of Black Pieter as the saint’s helper, because having a Moor is racist. In Prague, we’re still fine with a Devil scaring the kids with his chains. It’s a game, keeping an old tradition alive. I can’t imagine many of them believe the legend. I knew that St. Nick was my father, and that the Devil wore my uncle’s shoes. These days, chocolates and oranges can be bought any time, and parents hardly ever hit their kids, because they don’t want to end in prison.

No matter how I try, I am not able to change my mind about labeling Spranger’s art. Yes, he did a number of religious paintings, but as a number of reviewers of last year’s exhibition of his art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art have written, he was a painter of erotica. Gerald Stiebel comments on one devotional image in his blog, “The Lamentation of Christ,” a beautifully rendered small-format painting on copper (circa 6×4″) as follows: “One of the pictures that caught her [Sally Metzler’s] eye took me by surprise in the exhibition. It is a very small picture without wall power in the usual sense. But when you get close to this small copper representing “The Lamentation of Christ” that Spranger painted for Maximilian in 1576 it jumps out at you as if it were 3 dimensional. Unfortunately, it does not come off as such in an illustration but take my word for it. It is luminous and in a non-sexual way it is a very sensuous image. Spranger is a great Mannerist artist and the twisted figure of Christ is certainly a fine example of the style.”

Thrown together by chance, two unlikely people. Pieter–with Spranger’s memoir–and Karo–the translator. In Dutch art there are many pictures of lovesick maidens. That is not Karo’s problem. She doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going. The New Year’s Eve celebration in Salzburg’s fanciest hotel didn’t go quite right. Well, at least not in the beginning. Is Karo lovesick as Jan Steen’s Dutch maiden?

“That’ll be all,” I signed the bill after two espressos. The second bottle of wine was left unfinished.